Tuesday, April 23, 2013

ACRL 2013!


Here are my notes from my ACRL 2013 conference. Many program's handouts are available for anyone to view on this website.  I hope you will find something here useful and applicable:

Help them help themselves: Developing interactive tools to help faculty deal with copyright and fair use (presentation)   Presenter Mike Priehs, Coordinator for Scholarly Communications & Copyright at Wayne State University shared some awesome resources:
Keep It Streamlined for Students: Designing Library Instruction for the Online Learner Presenters are from U of MD, sharing ideas about scalable way to reach online learners:
  • 10 libs and staff, 20-30 students per class, about 4-6 classes a semester.  
  • Identify one key class in each dept to hone in on. Like a research methods or intro class. 
  • Set a week long library online classroom instruction. Called it a library conference. All asynchronous - find evaluate cite... Integrate and reflect, formative assessment.
  • Active learning, have them do exercises and tailor it to a particular class 
  • Designed instruction through an article by  Neal Toporski, and Tim Foley, “Design Principles for Online Instruction: A New Kind of Classroom,” Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education 5, no. 1 (2004).

This Library Orientation is Fun!: Building a Successful Virtual Tour Experience for Students Presenters from App State libraries, download the game files:
  • how to orient 500 students, w 3 librarians, 75 students, 4 hours! 
  • created a 360 degree panorama of the library, videos w interaction of librarian and students showing tools and resources; built with JavaScript, jquery, and huggin (a free for 350 panorama stitcher)
  • students view panoramic, view some videos, click on hot spots, little puzzle piece fills in, as all pieces fill in they then have to go there and retrieve something physical from the library, then they can take the quiz at the end ( totally online students can bypass this) 
Panel: Hacking the Learner Experience: techniques and strategies for connecting with your instructional ecosystem 

Brian Mathews: Hacking is pushing the envelope. Ex: Talked to adviser in mechanical engineer dept who didn't think they needed library support. They talked through the student’s process of "how would I get through this whole program" and found areas of need and support once they dove in the whole process. Curriculum mapping across disciplines (using mindomo) Goal: look at 360 degree view of the students experience through school and find new ways to support them, partner up, what skills do they need, and how can we tweak our instruction to meet these needs:  Build a learning network (it staff, tutors, librarians, etc...)

Lauren Pressley: Learner taxonomies - a standard categorization, took look at three:
  • Blooms taxonomy (since 1950s) 
  • Perry taxonomy (1968) - dualism, first year believe profs know all. Then contextual realism as they fight against and for what they want to know in second and third year. By fourth year, they accept others different opinions, and see commitment with contextual realism. Aka, design for freshman is much different that for seniors. 
  • Kolb (1984) - more holistic and experiential learning. Concrete experiences, observe and reflect, form abstract concepts, test in new situations. (do-observe-plan-think) all learners come in and different places and can start at any stages and they are all in your room at once. 
Andy Burkhardt: inquiry based learning, Teaching attitudes and habits of mind, not just tools and tips (lift long learning). Learner centric - with content as secondary. Information self - who are they in info process- ask them "where do you like to get info". "how do you search" (filter bubbles, Ted talks) Question centric : though students are usually wanting answers we need to have them think of questions (MikeWesch!) create good questioners Teachers become co-learners: let's us inquire together!

SustainRT
The new group I helped get started is the Sustainabilty Round Table of ALA (will be official as of July!) We hosted a round table discussion and a walk event at ACRL.  Lovely discussion on what various libraries were doing and where the new SustainRT group should head. Some things to check out:
The walk was great despite the cold temps and wind with about a dozen librarians, walking the canal trail, viewing the art, and with a fabulous tour guide – a local Indy children’s librarian!  Check out some great photos by Susan Sharpless Smith including this one:

The Art of Problem Discovery - adaptive thinking for innovative growth and discovery. Presenter Brian Matthews.  Really good session and worth reading his paper here. My key takeaways:
  • what is it that people really want, the outcomes? not the process.  EX: people do not want to buy a drill but drill a hole and need the drill to do so. 
  • How do we become better listeners than sales? What are the struggles of all our users, including faculty? how can we apply evolutionary ecology, lean manufactury, emotional cartography to libraries?
  • We are/can be problem solvers! Reach into other people's boxes not just "outside the box"
  • Lateral thinking:  vertical ideas, intentionally disrupt something. EX: ref desk, not thinking about its' value, but eliminate it as a thought and then challenge yourself to learn how things would function if it never existed.
  • Who to follow on twitter: Nextweb, fastcompany, wired
Panel:  “Love your library”: building goodwill from the inside out and the outside in
Definitely check out their awesome handout and ideas. Good for many in a library to consider. Key takeaways:
  •  library workshops -  used images created by fine arts students, w/ contribution to students artists, with back of handout having workshop listing; about 1/4 size of sheet of paper; added fb and twitter links - lots of marketing and attention grabbing, beautiful!
  • Anonymous white board for suggestions to library out of site of the desk; they take photos of questions and answers "conversation wall"
  • Social media monitoring - hoot suite dashboard w many terms to refer to the library
  • Teeny tiny orchestra, showed Silent films in the library & a Toy piano festival highlighted that discipline on campus (UNCG could do cello music festival)
  • Created 2d large scale images of themselves around the library to remind people that real people are here (tattle tape on them to not get stolen) including tech staff and behind the screens people too. 
  • Library hot dog outreach cart to be mobile around campus; create and use google map for location points. Also use this for other outreach!
  • ExCiting food event- collaboration w writing center - recipes were the citation examples pulled from archives, a website, interviews, book - all found in the library. Also info on citing libguide, Plagiarism. another ediable book festival
  • Re:book2013 - contest for students to take a book. Remake it. Win again! Helps them rethink what libraries are and how to reuse and not throw away stuff
OER (Open Educational Resources) Panel Session
CSU Stanislaus Library: 
  • Workshop on Affordable Leaning Solutions: covering  OER, Copyright Ereserves, Creative Commons, Fair Use,  and Accessible Services. 
  • Workshop/Libguide on future of the book.  
  • Partner w faculty dev center. Web space for faculty showcase. 
  • Create reading lists of materials on web pages instead of using textbooks.  
  • Challenge students to find their own best materials rather than worry about an open resource going away!
CSU San Jose Library:
  • Affordable solutions w partnerships campus book store- get list of all books faculty order, and match them up to ebooks in library.
  • Partner w FTLC on summer workshop for faculty on using OER in courses 
  • Ideas: Embed map into YouTube to do digital storytelling
  •  Partner e vendors like NYT   - use them as textbook! -  for certain classes (16 week subscription of wall st journal instead of textbook for a class!) 
  • Partners OER providers (Florida, California are using this): such as Merlot- require them to put content into Merlot, and encourage librarians to become a peer reviewer in Merlot
  • Use  academic pub -  they will put copyright info on page to educate on high costs to users! 
  • Moocs for flipped course model using "course site"  (free tool) in blackboard 
  • Cataloging OER resources into libcatalog like Hathi Trust etc.

Poster Session: One Search to Rule Them All: Mapping the Literature on Discovery & User Experience By Courtney Greene & Kate Moore. Check out here:  http://Bit.ly/1search


Monday, April 1, 2013

MOOCs and Libraries

In mid March I attended (well, watched live stream) the  OCLC Research and University of Pennsylvania's  MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge? conference. I wrote up a brief report on what I learned. Also check out the twitter hashtag: #mooclib.  Here is some basic information:

What are MOOCs: MOOC massive open online courses.  They are usually open and free, online courses not just videos or materials, taught by experts in their fields at universities partnered with and coordinated through one of these non-profit organization like  Coursera or  edX.  They are a disruptive technology.  With tuition costs rising, classes size growing, and online learning expanding, the public discourse pushing forward on MOOC concepts as they see a current broken education model (one speaker called it a “prestige arms race”). This disrupted technology will be growing, changing, shifting, and consolidating - think search engines in 1999 versus now.

Overview: MOOCs have been around for only about a year but have grown from 4 schools involved to 62 schools, and the growing audience of learners is phenomenal. MOOCs show incredible global reach – most MOOC students are not within the US – and demonstrate community engagement, with universities reaching out to their communities and through public library collaborations. Speakers and panelists discussed how MOOCs are seriously changing education, creating new ways to think about pedagogy of learning and how these ideas are being applied in non MOOC courses. These ideas include applying flipped classrooms, learning much smaller chunks of information at once, various class times, start times and lengths, giving students access to resources (videos, tutorials, quizzes, materials) to review over and over, and allowing students to learn at their own pace and their own timeframe. The two day conference included speakers – professors, scholarly communications librarians, library administrators, copyright experts - from various schools who have been working with MOOC providers including U Penn, Brown, Duke, Cornell, Berkeley, and LA County Public Library, as well as speakers from MOOC organizations and OCLC. They offered information on their various models, processes, procedures, growth, data on usage/audience and how librarians can and should be involved.

Why should librarians care? As one panelist said “it’s the perfect storm!”
•    disruptive to teaching and library models
•    externally driven - unlike past online learning growth
•    rapid uptake - seems contradictory to what we know and do
•    fast changing and always will be
•    happening in an environment of rising costs and questions about educational quality
•    potential revenue stream (many of now charging for credit)

Roles for libraries:
  • Resources -  Licensing, open access, copyright/fair use, creative commons:  The most important and critical role and one we already know!
  • Course Building - production, instructional design, integrating resources: a role some of us play in libraries and one that we might be able to assist with on our campuses.
  • Preservation and/or Archiving, and Institutional Repositories:  another critical role, who better to  help preserve the materials for MOOCs on the campus.
  • Materials Creations/Instructional Technologies: librarians as creators of information and assistance with tech tools for online course/MOOCs
  • Tech Savvy Expertise: Many of the panelists mentioned that libraries tend to be more tech savvy than they are - nice comment to hear!
  • Librarians create a MOOC & and take a MOOC or two: why not create on on information literacy or critical thinking ... but also we should take a MOOC to understand how it works.
  • Interdisciplinary, broad vision, key collaborators: the library is an establish entity on a campus in this role, important for a campus wide initiate like MOOCs.
The full report is available if anyone wants to learn more!  Check out the new MOOCs and Libraries Google Group too.

Follow up 5/1/13: